long-gun registry – canada.comhttp://o.canada.com
Canada's great, shareable storiesTue, 26 Sep 2017 19:54:19 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/http://1.gravatar.com/blavatar/15edae77ebfa450ee5bb897103fdef31?s=96&d=http%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pnglong-gun registry – canada.comhttp://o.canada.com
Court battle over gun registry costs RCMP $1M and countinghttp://o.canada.com/news/national/court-battle-over-gun-registry-costs-rcmp-1m-and-counting
http://o.canada.com/news/national/court-battle-over-gun-registry-costs-rcmp-1m-and-counting#commentsWed, 04 Dec 2013 19:41:56 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=361876]]>OTTAWA — It cost the federal government as much to defend in court its decision to destroy the long-gun registry as it did to kill it and the RCMP is not pleased to have had to pick up the tab, documents suggest.

The RCMP was billed $1.1 million for litigation costs last year to fight provincial efforts to halt the destruction of the long-gun registry.

The government had already erased the data for the rest of the country at a cost of just under $1 million, according to a previous report.

In a letter to the deputy minister of public safety, Commissioner Bob Paulson indicated the RCMP had “identified” funds to cover the litigation costs this year but he made no promises for the future.

“While we are able to be of assistance this fiscal year, I do not expect that we will enjoy such flexibility in years to come given the escalating impacts of the Deficit Reduction Action Plan and other significant internal budget pressures,” he wrote in what appeared to be a more diplomatic final version of the letter.

“It is recommended that for the fiscal year 2013-2014 and beyond, Public Safety Canada identify an alternative source for funding for Bill C-19 litigation costs.”

His latter comment came in a sharper draft of the letter. Both documents were obtained by Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin through access to information legislation.

The Ending the Long-gun Registry Act became law in April 2012 despite opposition from police, gun control advocates and several provinces, including Quebec, which recently got the green light to challenge the government’s plan to destroy the records before the Supreme Court.

The province wants to preserve federal data on long-guns registered in Quebec in a bid to create its own registry.

Quebec was instrumental in the creation of the federal registry, ushered in by Jean Chretien’s Liberal government in response to the 1989 massacre at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal where 14 women were gunned down by madman Marc Lepine.

Now a national day of remembrance and action to end violence against women, Canadians will mark the 24th anniversary of the massacre on Friday.

According to the documents, it’s estimated to have cost the RCMP another $571,080 to maintain the federal long-gun registry records in Quebec pending the resolution of its challenge. That said, the cost estimate is only up to date as of September 30, 2012, which means the price tag may well have more than doubled since then.

If Quebec loses its bid to keep the records, the RCMP estimates it’ll cost another $80,000 to delete them over the course of 80 days.

While a similar challenge to preserve the records ultimately failed in Ontario in September 2012, the RCMP produced a cost analysis about a month earlier just in case. The analysis considered two scenarios: the cost of preserving the data in Ontario alone, and the cost of preserving the data everywhere but Quebec.

Preserving the data in Ontario until the end of the last fiscal year would have cost the RCMP $2.2 million. It would have cost more than $5 million more to preserve the data across Canada, excluding Quebec.

“The (Canadian Firearms Program) would require additional funding if the Ontario motion on non-restricted firearms registration continues into fiscal year 2013-14, in order to address backlogs and meet (Deficit Reduction Action Plan) targets,” the documents say.

The estimates relate strictly to the RCMP and do not include costs incurred by Justice Canada or the department of Public Safety.

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]]>http://o.canada.com/news/national/court-battle-over-gun-registry-costs-rcmp-1m-and-counting/feed1AcadiatobicohenJohn Williamson channels Martin Luther King Jr. in long-gun registry comment — day after anniversary of King’s deathhttp://o.canada.com/uncategorized/john-williamson-channels-martin-luther-king-jr-in-long-gun-registry-comment-day-after-anniversary-of-kings-death
http://o.canada.com/uncategorized/john-williamson-channels-martin-luther-king-jr-in-long-gun-registry-comment-day-after-anniversary-of-kings-death#respondThu, 05 Apr 2012 23:40:59 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=44748]]>Near the end of question period Thursday in the House of Commons, a Conservative backbencher stood up to talk about the final passage of Bill C-19, the bill that would end the long-gun registry, and channelled civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King Jr.

New Brunswick MP John Williamson was asking about the death of the registry, which was supposed to take place today with royal assent from the Governor General. In the preface to his question he said this: “Free at last, free at last, law-abiding Canadians are finally free at last.”

The words are famous because they came from King’s mouth during his famous “I Have a Dream” speech (a pdf of the text is available here) delivered in August 1963. The words have become synonymous with human rights and a key moment in civil rights history. Five years after saying the famous words, King was assassinated, shot dead at a motel in Memphis, Tenn. The 44th anniversary of his death was Wednesday, the same day the Senate voted 50-27 — “overwhelmingly,” Williamson said — in favour of abolishing the long-gun registry. Needless to say, some people were a little irked by Williamson’s speech, while supporters of ending the registry applauded the enthusiasm the MP showed.

NB MP John Williamson celebrated the end of long gun registry by quoting Martin Luther King: "Free at last." King was murdered by a sniper.

This is the second time in as many weeks that a member of Parliament has invoked King. On March 25, NDP MP Charlie Angus used the same words from King that Williamson did when he told his Twitter followers he was done with the social media site. In his final tweet, Angus wrote: “Dear twitter — adios. Free at last. Free at last. Great God almighty free at last.” Angus found himself freed from what he said were the “vicious” content of some tweets from seemingly anonymous people, Postmedia’s Bradley Bouzanereported last week.

But those words from King that Williamson cited — “free at last” — don’t quite capture what the Conservatives were hoping for with the end of the registry. A Quebec court ordered the federal government to keep the registry’s records intact after the provincial government was successful in getting an injunction Thursday, just before C-19 was to be signed into law.

]]>http://o.canada.com/uncategorized/john-williamson-channels-martin-luther-king-jr-in-long-gun-registry-comment-day-after-anniversary-of-kings-death/feed0jordanpresHow MPs voted on the bill to axe the long-gun registryhttp://o.canada.com/news/how-mps-voted-on-the-bill-to-axe-the-long-gun-registry
http://o.canada.com/news/how-mps-voted-on-the-bill-to-axe-the-long-gun-registry#respondThu, 16 Feb 2012 00:49:36 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=32467]]>The majority Conservative government, along with two New Democrat MPs, voted to kill the long-gun registry on Wednesday during third reading of the bill in the House of Commons, in a vote of 159 to 130. The bill must now go to the Senate, where the Tory majority is almost certain to pass it. Here’s a full list of members of Parliament and how they voted on bill to eliminate the long-gun registry… There’s not really any short way of listing MPs (easiest way to search might be to go under the ‘Edit’ tab and go to ‘Find’ to search a name of your MP).

“Under the new rules, is it your understanding that an individual selling a gun will be legally required to find out that the buyer is licensed to own them?” Geddes asked.

“What is very clear is that there is a legal prohibition against the individual from selling a firearm to a person who is not licensed,” said Toews. “So that would be a criminal breach for that individual to do that.”

Geddes followed up: “So if I sell my gun and it turns out the person who bought it doesn’t have a proper licence, I’m going to be charged criminally?”

“There is a requirement on you to satisfy yourself that the person is licensed, and that’s always been the law,” said Toews. “The law in that respect isn’t changing.”

Toews appears to be confused. The law is changing.

If you sell a gun today, you must check the licence of the buyer by calling the Mounties. Tomorrow, after MPs have voted to amendSection 23 of the Firearms Act, you will no longer be required to make that call.

The act will still require that the buyer holds a licence, and the seller must have “no reason to believe that the transferee is not authorized” to own it.

This is odd language for a law, since there seems not to be a positive onus on the seller, and gun control advocates are afraid it will no longer actually be illegal to sell a firearm to someone without seeing a licence. The bill may open a loophole that would allow unscrupulous gun sellers to sell guns to anyone, licensed or not. It may have been drafted, ever so sneakily, with that outcome in mind, because gun-rights activists would like to get rid of the licensing system after they have got rid of the registry.

In an ideal world, the Senate would make sure the bill doesn’t stealthily achieve that goal.

After C-19 is passed tonight, it will go to the Senate’s legal and constitutional affairs committee, where senators can quietly examine that section in detail, without a lot of screaming and yelling, as we get in the House of Commons whenever MPs debate the registry.

In the minority era, when the Conservatives were trying to marshall enough opposition votes to kill the gun registry, the bills they put forward still required sellers to validate buyers’ licences. Now that they have enough votes to get this passed, they have (ever so quietly) lifted that requirement. It is up to the Senate now to make sure it doesn’t go farther, and undermine the licensing system that prevents criminals from buying guns.

]]>http://o.canada.com/uncategorized/in-an-ideal-world/feed1stphnmaherHarper shows doubts about Keystone project, eyes Asia for Canadian oilhttp://o.canada.com/news/harper-shows-doubts-about-keystone-project-eyes-asia-for-canadian-oil
http://o.canada.com/news/harper-shows-doubts-about-keystone-project-eyes-asia-for-canadian-oil#respondTue, 20 Dec 2011 03:16:53 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=27126]]>Canada could sell its oil to China and other overseas markets with or without approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline in the United States, says Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

In a year-end television interview, Harper indicated he had doubts the $7-billion pipeline would receive political approval from U.S. President Barack Obama, and that Canada should be looking outside the United States for markets.

“I am very serious about selling our oil off this continent, selling our energy products off to Asia. I think we have to do that,” Harper said in the Monday interview with CTV National News with Lisa Laflamme.

Harper’s comments were released a day after the White House sent signals it might kill TransCanada Corp.’s oilsands pipeline if it is forced to make a decision on the project in 60 days, saying there wasn’t sufficient time to complete a new environmental review.

Even though the project could still win approval from the Obama administration, Harper appeared to believe that the pipeline would not be completed, meaning Canada would have to look elsewhere to trade its oil.

“When I was down in the United States recently it was interesting. I ran into several senior Americans who all said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get Keystone done. You can sell all of your oil to us.’ I said, ‘Yeah we’d love to,’ but I think the problem is now that we’re on a different track,” Harper said.

Keystone was just one of the topics of conversation in the interview.

On military intervention in Syria:

“I don’t see any likelihood of that in near future. As you know what really made the Libya mission possible was ultimately a Security Council resolution that had authorized a series of actions. I don’t see that taking place here. I don’t see the willingness of our allies to act militarily without such a resolution. So I think we’ll continue to see stepped up pressure through diplomatic and through other trade sanctions. And, I don’t think it is any secret that our expectation is that this regime will eventually be toppled. It may not be this year, but that time is coming. So, we’ll continue to put pressure and do what we can do to encourage opposition to coalesce and govern the country.”

On reports critical of Defence Minister Peter MacKay’s spending:

“Well, you know, that specific incident that I think you cite, Mr. MacKay went to a conference and he stayed at the hotel the conference was being held in. That is what every other participant did. That is just the cost of doing business. We encourage our ministers to be frugal. Fact of the matter is that we use government aircraft 80 per cent less than predecessors. We have cut hospitality and those kind of ministerial expenses by one-third. So we’ll continue to look at opportunities to cut those numbers further but there are some costs of doing business.”

On abolishing the long-gun registry and its database:

“Because we’re very clear that we’re abolishing the registry. If we didn’t get rid of the data, we wouldn’t be abolishing the registry. If there are provinces that want to set up their own registry, they have that constitutional right. One province is talking about doing it. But I would strongly recommend against doing it. We think it is bad policy and we recommend against doing that. We think it’s a bad policy that is not effective. We’ve been very clear on that.”

Those are the opening lines for a new radio ad the Conservative Party of Canada released on Sunday, part of a campaign to let Canadians know the government is on the verge of killing the registry. The radio advertisement has a couple talking about the registry’s demise in casual conversation, and also giving a thumbs-up to the Tories for following through on their campaign promise to scrap the registry. The launch of the ad on Sunday is coupled with the official launch of a website, ScrappedTheRegistry.ca. A press release from the Conservative Party mentioned that the site hosted more than one advertisement, but only one is found. The release also didn’t say where and when the ads would be playing.

The registry isn’t officially scrapped, just yet. The legislation to end the registry, Bill C-19, has not yet gone for third reading to the House of Commons. (After that, it heads to the Senate for approval and, finally, Royal Assent.) When parliamentarians went on their winter break, the shelved C-19 and its passage until 2012.

]]>http://o.canada.com/uncategorized/conservative-party-launches-registry-radio-ads/feed0jordanpresPicture 1Alberta Conservative MP Jim Hillyer votes against gun registry with finger guns a blazing — with videohttp://o.canada.com/news/alberta-conservative-mp-jim-hillyer-votes-with-finger-guns-a-blazing-with-video
http://o.canada.com/news/alberta-conservative-mp-jim-hillyer-votes-with-finger-guns-a-blazing-with-video#respondTue, 06 Dec 2011 18:38:32 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=25841]]>Opposition parties are attacking Alberta Conservative member of Parliament Jim Hillyer for what they say is an irresponsible and insensitive gesture that saw the rookie MP use a finger guns ‘pow pow’ motion when voting to abolish the long-gun registry.

The first-term Lethbridge Tory MP — dubbed by his local newspaper as The Man Who Wasn’t There for failing to show up at some all-candidates debates during the federal election campaign — pulled out his finger guns last month during a vote on legislation that would eliminate the registry.

The federal government’s Bill C-19, which seeks to end the $2-billion registry and destroy all traces of its existence, has been hotly debated among MPs and the provinces. Hillyer, along with his Conservative colleagues, are excited to finally end the registry after the government unsuccessfully tried to do so during minority rule.

On Tuesday, the NDP, Liberals and Bloc Quebecois all attacked Hillyer and the Tories for the gesture — on what was the 22nd anniversary of the Montreal Massacre that saw crazed gunman Marc Lepine kill 14 women at École Polytechnique.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/alberta-conservative-mp-jim-hillyer-votes-with-finger-guns-a-blazing-with-video/feed0jasonfeketeShow me the study: A tale of two Tory tactics when it comes to facts on crimehttp://o.canada.com/news/show-me-the-study-a-tale-of-two-tory-tactics-when-it-comes-to-facts-on-crime
http://o.canada.com/news/show-me-the-study-a-tale-of-two-tory-tactics-when-it-comes-to-facts-on-crime#commentsTue, 22 Nov 2011 23:05:01 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=24900]]>OTTAWA — Little more than an hour after one Conservative was attacked for failing to cough up studies to support the government’s tough-on-crime agenda, another was lacing into a community group for the same reason.

Quebec Justice Minister Jean-Marc Fournier emerged from a meeting with his federal counterpart Rob Nicholson frustrated after he was told the government would not put a hold on Bill C-10 — the controversial Safe Streets and Communities Act that gets tough on young offenders, child molesters, drug producers, Canadians in foreign jails and those seeking pardons.

Quebec wants the government to consider a series of amendments that take into account the province’s focus on rehabilitation and reintegration of young offenders, and Fournier asked to see the studies that support the Tory approach to criminal justice over Quebec’s.

He was instead told the provisions in C-10 were based on “personal observations.”

Nicholson later cited a study used in the drafting of the bill that “zeroed in on a small group of out of control young people,” but he dismissed a 2005 study by his own department that suggested strict minimum mandatory sentences don’t work and jurisdictions that once adopted them have since become more flexible.

Meanwhile, a Commons committee on public safety was debating another crime-related bill — C-19 which seeks to scrap the long-gun registry.

I happened to tune in just as Conservative MP Wai Young zeroed in on witnesses Ann Decter and Lyda Fuller of the YWCA for failing to conduct their own “empirical study” or produce others studies linking the registry to a reduction in gun crime, including gun crime related to domestic violence.

She asked about the studies following a lengthy diatribe in which she referenced her own experience as a sociologist working in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and recapped previous testimony that contradicted that of the YWCA women.

Decter said she’d be “more than happy” to conduct such a study if the government agreed to pay for it and went on to offer so-called “personal observation” recounted to her and others by then Senior Deputy RCMP Commissioner Marty Cheliak the last time she appeared before committee on the registry in May 2010:

A family phoned the police because they felt the father wad depressed and they were concerned about the guns that they had in the house, she recounted.

They told the police the guns that they thought were in the house. The police did a check on the registry and found there were 21 additional guns registered in the house that the rest of the family knew nothing about.

This is the kind of evidence that you can have in terms of prevention.

So the question remains, do studies trump personal observations or do personal observations trump studies?

I guess it depends on which piece of crime legislation the government is talking about.

Interestingly enough, many of those who support the omnibus crime bill, oppose the government’s plan to scrap the long-gun registry.

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/show-me-the-study-a-tale-of-two-tory-tactics-when-it-comes-to-facts-on-crime/feed4tobicohenCanada's Minister of Justice Nicholson speaks during QP in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in OttawaTories limit debate on long-gun registryhttp://o.canada.com/uncategorized/tories-limit-debate-on-long-gun-registry
http://o.canada.com/uncategorized/tories-limit-debate-on-long-gun-registry#commentsThu, 27 Oct 2011 16:14:54 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=22195]]>

OTTAWA — The Conservatives have again used their majority in the House of Commons to fast-track debate on a contentious subject — this time, the dismantling of the long-gun registry.

The government has successfully limited debate during 2nd reading to three days.

The vote: 145 to 117.

It should also be noted that New Democrats Niki Ashton, Dennis Bevington and John Rafferty all voted against the time allocation motion with their parties.

When a private members bill came up during the last Parliament to scrap the registry, the three MPs were among six New Democrats who broke the party line and voted with the Conservatives.

Earlier this week, NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel said the party is united in terms of wanting to keep the data. She said “we are not there yet” when asked if the eventual vote on the bill itself would be whipped.

The issue has long divided Canadians along rural and urban lines and some Liberals and New Democrats have been torn between the wishes of their constituents and the wishes of their respective parties.

The opposition has said it wants to keep the registry but make improvements to it.

This was the fifth time in 35 sitting days, according to NDP House Leader Joe Comartin, that the government has sought to limit debate on a hot topic.

Consequently, that means Parliament has spent about five hours debating and voting on how long they should debate and vote on a piece of legislation.

]]>http://o.canada.com/uncategorized/tories-limit-debate-on-long-gun-registry/feed2tobicohenAcadiaLet’s kill the long-gun registry and move onhttp://o.canada.com/uncategorized/lets-kill-the-long-gun-registry-and-move-on
http://o.canada.com/uncategorized/lets-kill-the-long-gun-registry-and-move-on#respondThu, 27 Oct 2011 15:47:08 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=22202]]>The long-gun registry is back in the news. The government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has launched a plan to finally put the federal long-gun registry out of business, plugging the hole down which more than $2 billion of taxpayers’ money has already drained.

The Tories have long argued that registration of rifles and shotguns is a useless burden on firearms owners and are now, with their majority in both the House and the Senate, in a position to scrap the database.

So once again the debate on the merits of the Tory initiative heats up: politicians posture and rant during Question Period and cable news channels top up their schedules with interviews with much the same characters as we heard during the debate on Manitoba MP Candice Hoeppner’s Bill C-391 in 2009, which would have repealed the long-gun registry back then, had it not been voted down by the opposition.

I hear two primary arguments for retaining this costly program: (a) it’s a valuable tool for police services; and (b) it reduces crimes committed with long guns.

Firstly, just because police say they want to have a certain tool doesn’t mean they should be given it. Many police services would like to have the option of searching homes without a warrant when a neighbourhood child goes missing. We may sympathize with police reasoning, but that does not justify suspending our basic right to privacy and protection against unlawful search. Our laws should not be crafted primarily to make police work easier – otherwise, there would be an across-the-board ban on all guns, and be damned with individual rights. As to statistics police chiefs use in support of their contention the registry is a valuable police tool, here’s a passage from a piece I wrote last September:

“A frequently used statistic to support keeping long guns in the registry is the 14,012 average daily queries the RCMP claim were made in 2010. This oft-quoted statistic is grossly misleading as only 530 of those are specific to firearms registration (i.e., licence number, serial number and certificate number). The remaining 96.3 per cent (13,482) are automatically generated every time an address is checked or a (motor vehicle) license plate is verified.”

Secondly, crimes committed with long guns have indeed been declining. Some rightly point to the fact that from the mid-1990s—when the firearms registry became law—to 2010, there was a reduction in long-gun crimes. But, as pointed out by the National Post’s Lorne Gunter in Wednesday’s newspaper, “there was already less (gun crime) in 1998 than there had been in 1988, and less in 1988 than there had been in 1978.” In other words, violent crime per capita in Canada peaked in 1975 and the rate has been on the decline since then.
It’s been the law in Canada since 1934 to register handguns. Yet handgun crimes are rampant on the streets of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. If registration had the power to prevent crime and improve our safety, this simply would not be the case.

The long-gun registry applies only to sporting rifles and shotguns; all firearms classified as “restricted” or “prohibited” would remain registered, even after the House passes, as expected, its new bill.

Moreover, it is instructive to note there are alternatives in the form of other databases that keep track of firearm threats. Tom Stamatakis, president of the Canadian Police Association, gives the following examples:

The National Information Centre holds criminal records;

Police have access to data on firearms licences;

And provincial databases, such as PRIME (Police Records Information Management Environment) in British Columbia, collect information from previous incidents, including where police noted firearms at people’s homes.

The long-gun registry was inspired by the murder of 14 students at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique by Marc Lepine using a legally obtained Mini-14 rifle. The current law would not have prevented that tragic incident.

Since its inception, the long-gun registry has been mired in controversy, distortions and scandal. The gun registry has been reasonably described as a boondoggle and one of the most embarrassing spending scandals in federal Liberal Party history.

Spin, half-truths and muddled reasoning have been hallmarks of this debate. Let’s scrap the useless long-gun registry and move on.

Russ Campbell is a Burlington, Ont.-based blogger and a former finance and information technology executive. He also publishes Russ Campbell’s Blog.

Read Postmedia News’ series on the fight over ‘civilianized’ assault rifles. Part 1 is here. Follow the related links for subsequent stories.

]]>http://o.canada.com/uncategorized/lets-kill-the-long-gun-registry-and-move-on/feed0russcampbell.Information commish likely to review legislation proposing the destruction of long gun recordshttp://o.canada.com/news/information-commish-likely-to-review-proposed-destruction-of-long-gun-records
http://o.canada.com/news/information-commish-likely-to-review-proposed-destruction-of-long-gun-records#respondWed, 26 Oct 2011 20:37:27 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=22135]]>OTTAWA-Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault will likely review provisions of new legislation proposing the destruction of records associated with the long gun registry.

A spokeswoman for Legault said the commissioner had not yet looked at the legislation, but would likely do so in the future and provide her recommendations to Parliament.

The comments were in response to a complaint filed by Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin asking both Legault and Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart to examine the provisions which were included in new legislation to eliminate the registry – Bill C-19, the Ending the Long Gun Registry Act.

In his letter, Rubin suggested the legislation was a violation of provisions of the Access to Information Act for governments to seek to alter or destroy records for political reasons.

“What is of concern and under attack is an attempt to avoid the regular way of retaining or destroying records by taking away the right for such a decision from regular retention regulations and from Library and Archives Canada,” said Rubin in the letter.

“Retained records of course can become accessible and be the basis of basic safety information and policy making.”

Stoddart’s office was not immediately able to comment.

mdesouza@postmedia.com

twitter.com/mikedesouza

]]>http://o.canada.com/news/information-commish-likely-to-review-proposed-destruction-of-long-gun-records/feed0mikejdesouzaFeds won’t make it easy for provinces to start own gun registrieshttp://o.canada.com/news/feds-wont-make-it-easy-for-provinces-to-start-own-gun-registries
http://o.canada.com/news/feds-wont-make-it-easy-for-provinces-to-start-own-gun-registries#respondMon, 24 Oct 2011 22:39:23 +0000http://blogs.canada.com/?p=21959]]>OTTAWA — Set to scrap the controversial long-gun registry thanks to their new found majority, the Conservatives indicated Monday that they’re unlikely to help provinces that like it and want to implement their own.

“Provincial governments are free to proceed as they wish but we will not assist in setting up another registry,” Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said Monday during question period.

“Records held by the Canadian firearms program will not be shared with the provinces.”

Toews made the comments in response to a question from Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia who suggested some provinces, like Quebec, were prepared to assume the responsibility themselves.

He also asked whether the government would continue to allow police officers across the country to consult the information currently contained in the registry.

The minister did not answer that question.

Toews is poised to introduce the bill entitled “An Act to amend the Criminal Code and Firearms Act” on Tuesday.

He will make the announcement in the town of Richmond, just west of Ottawa.

The government was set to introduce the legislation last week but listed the wrong minister’s name on the House of Commons order paper.

The mistake was corrected on Monday.

The bill is certain to renew political debate between those who feel the registry is an important tool for police and those who think it’s an expensive burden for otherwise law-abiding gun owners.

In the past, it has also illustrated the urban-rural divide within Canada and even caused tension in opposition parties as members struggled to reconcile the needs of their constituents with their party’s overall wish to maintain the registry.